Staff Reporter :The National Board of Revenue [NBR] is likely to extend the deadline for submission of income tax returns for 2014-15 tax-year by individual taxpayers for few more days, official sources said.The earlier fixed deadline is scheduled to expire on Sunday [today].Sources said the deadline may be extended by 15 days to one month, for the second consecutive term. The NBR will issue an order today in this regard. The exact timeframe for extension, however, is yet to be finalised by the board. A senior official said the previous timeframe would be changed due to poor trend in submission of tax returns until Thursday.About 5,00,000 individual taxpayers out of 17, 00,000 TIN [Tax Identification Number] holders have so far submitted their tax returns in their respective tax offices, the official said.It is learnt that many of the trade associations and professionals, including lawyers, requested the NBR to extend the deadline by another one to two.The recent shutdowns by Jamaat-e Islami may be also taken into consideration for extension of the deadline.The NBR earlier fixed deadline for filing income tax returns on November 2 from September 30.Tax officials said a large number of people could not submit tax returns due to two major religious festivals, Eid-ul-Azha and Durga Puja, within September 30 deadline. Besides, the last two days of October were weekends.Extension of the deadline has been a common feature over the years. The tax authorities extended the timeframe several times due to political unrest and to allow people more time to get electronic taxpayer identification numbers [e-TIN].
